


To Catch a Ferret

by FleetofShippyShips



Series: Prompted Harry Potter Works [51]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: HP: EWE, Hogwarts Eighth Year, M/M, Multi, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 15:32:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14264100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleetofShippyShips/pseuds/FleetofShippyShips
Summary: Prompt: "Somebody's in love!"





	To Catch a Ferret

“Somebody’s in love!”

Draco’s ears burned, and he hurriedly shoved the stupid thing in his bag. The twins stood over him, and the sight of them with no warning set his stomach all a-flutter. A ridiculous reaction he had so far failed to put down.

“What are you two doing here?” he snapped, looking around the eighth-year common room and taking note of who was there, and who might have seen the ghastly pink monstrosity he’d shoved in his bag. He shouldn’t have looked at it in the common room in the first place. He shouldn’t have looked at it at all. He should have burned the damn thing. Curse his stupid vanity.

“Now, now,” Fred chided, settling to his left on the couch.

“Is that any way to talk to your friends?” George added, as he settled on the right.

Seamus was staring at them from his armchair across the room, his mouth dropped open from shock. Draco wished he hadn’t noticed that.

“Friends?” Draco snorted and tried to stand up. A hand on each arm pulled him back down, and then Fred reached into his bag and pulled out the pink nightmare.

“Somebody loves you.”

“I hate you both,” he muttered, his face burning as Fred snickered. His stomach was still bloody fluttering.

“So grumpy,” George laughed. “Shouldn’t you be happy to have a secret admirer?”

“Aren’t Malfoy’s supposed to preen when someone loves them?” Fred added. “Or is that your peacocks?”

“Ha, ha,” Draco said, deadpan. “Why are you here?”

“Unless…”

They exchanged a look, and Draco groaned. “If you honestly think I’d be caught dead sending someone a pink monstrosity like that, then I clearly underestimated your collective and individual intelligence!”

Fred snickered, dropping the valentine back into Draco’s bag without reading it.

“Relax,” George said. “We just finished making deliveries of last-minute purchases for this fine holiday. Thought we’d drop by.”

“Say hello to our favourite bouncing ferret.”

Draco ignored the old insult and perked up. “Last-minute? Did you finally get the dosage right on the butterfly potion?”

Fred tapped the side of his nose. “Weren’t you the one who said we weren’t to bother you with business during weekdays?”

“Yeah, something about needing absolute focus to get the best grades possible in this, your year of redemption,” George added.

“Very up himself,” Fred said conversationally.

“Probably means to snub our permanent job offer,” George responded. “Probably wants to go breed peacocks instead.”

“Or ferrets.”

“ _The potion?_ ” Draco said firmly, refusing to get dragged into their verbal back and forth.

Fred grinned and pulled a vial from the inside pocket of his jacket. “Anything for my hero.”

George snickered, and Draco rolled his eyes. “I bumped into someone and ruined the trajectory of their spell. I’m hardly a hero,” he said, taking the vial from him.

“A life saved is a life saved,” Fred said, on cue, as he always did, even if it often turned the mood more serious than was fun.

“Did students order this?” Draco asked, ignoring Fred’s reminder of what he’d done. He unstopped the top and inhaled the cherry scent he’d imbued the potion with. Leaving it half-finished to return to Hogwarts had been a nightmare. He hated leaving things unfinished. Then again, all that had been left was fixing the dosage, and he wasn’t quite stupid enough to be their guinea pig for things like that, even if he did like to help out with their products.

“Nah, it’s mostly older folk,” George said, watching him closely.

“Like you predicted,” Fred added.

Draco inhaled the scent for a moment longer, and then re-stoppered it and slipped it into the pocket of his robes.

Their faces fell in unison.

“You’re not going to try it?”

“Not even a wee sip?”

Draco shook his head, his stomach fluttering again, and his cheeks burning. “Need a controlled environment to test a potion like that,” he muttered, trying to forget that Seamus ‘can’t keep his mouth shut about anything’ Finnigan was probably listening in. “And I have to get to the library. They may have given us the day off from classes, but not assignments!”

“Aww,” Fred crooned.

“Would you listen to that,” George said, nudging Draco’s side. “A controlled environment.”

“Say, that wouldn’t happen to be code for ‘one of you already gives me the fluttery feeling of an early relationship high’ now would it?” Fred nudged his other side.

Draco extracted himself from them and the couch, and stood abruptly, hoisting his bag up on his shoulder, his face burning. As if they didn’t already know.

“I won’t dignify that with a response,” he said, walking off before they managed to drag him back down.

Once he left the common room he inhaled sharply, and just managed to stop himself from pressing a hand to his stomach. Butterflies. Like a damn fourteen-year-old.

Without warning, Fred appeared on his right, and George on his left. They linked their arms through his, hooking their arms at the elbow.

“There was one other reason we came to the castle,” Fred said.

“Being Valentine’s day and all,” George added.

Draco shivered. “No.”

“Yes,” they said in unison.

“You can’t spend all day in the library,” George pointed out.

“That’s just sad.”

Draco groaned. He’d really thought they’d keep on ignoring his infatuation with them. “So which one of you is dragging me out to some stupid, pink-infested date spot?” he muttered.

There was long pause, and then a quiet, “Does it have to be only one of us?”

“We rather thought you’d like it to be both of us?”

Draco’s ears were burning again.

“Or at least, that’s how it seemed by the end of your summer internship with us,” Fred said gently. The internship had been his idea. Charity, really, since the Ministry had frozen the Malfoy family vaults until the outcomes of the trials, and then delayed his father’s trial for months.

Payment for a life saved. Distasteful, but Draco had been just desperate enough to go for it.

And then it had been more enjoyable than he ever could have imagined.

And then he’d gone and developed _feelings_ for them both. Like a fool.

“If you want to choose, you can,” George added. “We won’t hold it against you. But you should know you don’t have to.”

Draco swallowed heavily. It couldn’t be that easy. Nothing was ever that easy.

“We’ve always been good at sharing,” Fred said with an awkward chuckle.

“Sharing is what we do,” George added.

“We do it very well.”

Draco weighed his words carefully. Two people meant twice the risk of screwing things up. Even with perfect grades, he wasn’t sure he’d find decent employment if working with the twins became untenable due to a ruined attempt at some kind of relationship.

“I’m not a cheap date,” he said slowly. By which he really meant he was horribly difficult, but every time he’d said something self-deprecating around them over summer, later in the same day he’d find himself thoroughly pranked.

Their intentions were not difficult to discern.

They both laughed, and as he looked at them both, he saw they were genuinely amused.

“Well, good thing there’s two of us then,” Fred joked.

“To spread the cost!” George laughed.

Draco rolled his eyes and once against resisted the urge to grasp at his fluttering stomach. George did have a lovely laugh.

“Or we could go flying,” Draco suggested.

Fred clutched at his chest. “Be still my heart!”

“A romantic flight through the countryside?” George mimicked the motion.

“On Valentine’s day?”

Draco groaned. He’d walked right into that one.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by @banana-ge-ge.


End file.
